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Sonification Design From Data to

Intelligible Soundfields David Worrall


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Human–Computer Interaction Series

David Worrall

Sonification
Design
From Data to Intelligible Soundfields
Human–Computer Interaction Series

Editors-in-Chief
Desney Tan
Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

Jean Vanderdonckt
Louvain School of Management, Université catholique de Louvain,
Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium
The Human-Computer Interaction Series, launched in 2004, publishes books that
advance the science and technology of developing systems which are effective and
satisfying for people in a wide variety of contexts. Titles focus on theoretical
perspectives (such as formal approaches drawn from a variety of behavioural
sciences), practical approaches (such as techniques for effectively integrating user
needs in system development), and social issues (such as the determinants of utility,
usability and acceptability).
HCI is a multidisciplinary field and focuses on the human aspects in the
development of computer technology. As technology becomes increasingly more
pervasive the need to take a human-centred approach in the design and
development of computer-based systems becomes ever more important.
Titles published within the Human–Computer Interaction Series are included in
Thomson Reuters’ Book Citation Index, The DBLP Computer Science
Bibliography and The HCI Bibliography.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6033


David Worrall

Sonification Design
From Data to Intelligible Soundfields

123
David Worrall
Department of Audio Arts and Acoustics
Columbia College Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA

ISSN 1571-5035 ISSN 2524-4477 (electronic)


Human–Computer Interaction Series
ISBN 978-3-030-01496-4 ISBN 978-3-030-01497-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01497-1
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
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For Bek
My Angkor, Wat
Preface and Acknowledgements

This book is about the contemporary design practice known as data sonification,
which assists us to experience information by listening, much as we understand
relationships between spatial features by viewing a graph of them. Data sonification
begins with the observation that sounds can convey meanings in a multiplicity of
circumstances: Exploring the structure of deep space, detecting a stock-market
bubble, assisting injured patients to recover more quickly with less pain, monitoring
the flow of traffic to help detect potential congestion, improving sporting perfor-
mance, tracking storms, earthquakes and other changes in the environment … and
the list could go on: hundreds of applications that rely on studies in acoustics and
psychoacoustics, philosophy of perception, cognitive psychology, computer sci-
ence, creative auditory design and music composition.
Data sonification grew out of an interest by composers in generating musical
forms with the assistance of computers: algorithmic compositions based on both
traditional musical languages, and the exploration of mathematical models of nat-
ural and abstract worlds. With ears searching for new means of expressing the
contemporary world, they explored such fields as fractal geometry, neural networks,
iterated function and reaction–diffusion systems, and flocking and herding. As
computer processing speeds and storage capacity increased, and digital networks
evolved, it became possible to use large datasets from real and real-time systems,
not just abstract idealized models, and this led us into the currently emerging era of
Big Data.
One of the motivations for this book was to understand some of the perceptual
and conceptual correlates of intelligible data sonification so as to encapsulate the
knowledge-bases that underpin them in software design. For example, the psy-
choacoustic, gestural and psycho-physiological substrates such as cognitive-load
sensitivity and emotional valence, with low-level latent functions that can be
compiled into higher level interactive modelling tools. Design is an inherently
‘messy’ and iterative activity that, while a process, may never be entirely proce-
dural. So, the purpose here is not to trivialize the skills of an experienced designer,
but to hierarchize the masking of many of the functional decisions made in
designing, including such processes as equal-loudness contouring and modal

vii
viii Preface and Acknowledgements

convex pitch and time transforms. It is hoped that in doing so, novice designers
might consider more adventurous possibilities and experienced designers will be
enabled to implement complex procedures more flexibly: to test multiple different
approaches to sonifying a dataset.

Part I: Theory

Chapter 1: The idea that sound can reliably convey information predates the modern
era. The term data sonification has evolved along with its applications and use-
fulness in various disciplines. It can be broadly described as the creation and study
of the aural representation of information, or the use of sound to convey
non-linguistic information. As a field of contemporary enquiry and design practice,
it is young, interdisciplinary and evolving; existing in parallel to the field of data
visualization, which is concerned with the creation and study of the visual repre-
sentation of information. Sonification and visualization techniques have many
applications in ‘humanizing’ information, particularly when applied to large and
complex sets of data. Drawing on ancient practices such as auditing, and the use of
information messaging in music, this chapter provides an historical understanding
of how sound and its representational deployment in communicating information
has changed. In doing so, it aims to encourage critical awareness of some of the
socio-cultural as well as technical assumptions often adopted in sonifying data,
especially those that have been developed in the context of Western music of the
past half-century or so. Whilst acknowledging the Eurocentricity of the enquiry,
there is no suggestion that the ideas discussed do not have wider applicability.
Chapter 2: Encompassing ideas and techniques from music composition, per-
ceptual psychology, computer science, acoustics, biology and philosophy, data
sonification is a multi- even trans-disciplinary practice. This Chapter summarizes
different ways sonification has been defined, the types and classifications of data
that it attempts to represent with sound, and how these representations perform
under the pressure of various real-world utilizations.
Chapter 3: One task of data sonification is to provide a means by which listeners
can obtain new ideas about the nature of the source of derived data. In so doing they
can increase their knowledge and comprehension of that source and thus improve
the efficiency, accuracy and/or quality of their knowledge acquisition and any
decision-making based on it. The purpose of this chapter is to develop an historical
understanding of what information is as a concept, how information can be rep-
resented in various forms as something that can be communicated with non-verbal
sonic structures between its source and its (human) receiver and thus retained as
knowledge. Whilst a complete philosophical and psychological overview of these
issues is outside the scope of the chapter, it is important, in the context of devel-
oping computational design strategies that enable such communication, to gain an
understanding of some of the basic concepts involved. A quasi-historical episte-
mology of human perception and the types of information these epistemologies
Preface and Acknowledgements ix

engender is followed by a discussion of the phenomenal nature of sounds and sonic


structures their ability to convey information of various sorts.
Chapter 4: The previous chapter traced a path towards an understanding of the
inadequacy of epistemological approaches to knowledge formation that do not
account for the deeply embodied nature of perception, to succeed in solving any but
highly constrained problems. The slower-than-expected rise in the effectiveness of
artificial intelligence provided the impetus for a more critical examination of the
ontological dimensions of perception and human knowledge, which necessitated
the recognition of another form of truth which is not derived empirically but from
meaningful action. This chapter enunciates this Pragmatist approach as it can be
applied to sonification design: a generative activity in which bespoke design skills
are supported by scientific research in biology, perception, cognitive science—in
the field of conceptual metaphor theory in particular, and aesthetics. It proceeds to
outline pertinent features of a broad design methodology based on the under-
standings developed that could yield to computational support.
Chapter 5: The need for better software tools for data sonification was high-
lighted in the 1997 Sonification Report, the first comprehensive status review of the
field which included some general proposals for adapting sound synthesis software
to the needs of sonification research. It outlined the reasons the demands on soft-
ware by sonification research are greater than those afforded by music composition
and sound synthesis software alone. As its Sample Research Proposal acknowl-
edged, the development of a comprehensive sonification shell is not easy and the
depth and breadth of knowledge, and skills required to effect such a project are
easily underestimated. Although many of the tools developed to date have various
degrees of flexibility and power for the integration of sound synthesis and data
processing, a complete heterogeneous Data Sonification Design Framework
(DSDF) for research and auditory display has not yet emerged. This chapter out-
lines the requirements for such a comprehensive framework, and proposes an
integration of various existing independent components such as those for data
acquisition, storage and analysis, together with a means to include new work on
cognitive and perceptual mappings, and user interface and control, by encapsulating
them, or control of them, as Python libraries, as well as a wrappers for new
initiatives, which together, form the basis of SoniPy, a comprehensive toolkit for
computational sonification designing.

Part II: Praxis

Chapter 6: Having established the design criteria for a comprehensive heteroge-


neous data sonification software framework in the previous chapter, this chapter
introduces two pillars of such a framework, the Python and Csound programming
languages, as integrated through a Python–Csound Application Programming
Interface. The result is a mature, stable, flexible and comprehensive combination of
x Preface and Acknowledgements

tools suitable for real and non-realtime sonification, some of the features of which
are illustrated in the examples of subsequent chapters.
Chapter 7: Despite intensive study, a comprehensive understanding of the
structure of capital market trading data remains elusive. The one known application
of audification to market price data reported in 1990 that it was difficult to interpret
the results, probably because the market does not resonate according to acoustic
laws. This chapter illustrates some techniques for transforming data so it does
resonate; so audification may be used as a means of identifying autocorrelation in
trading–and similar–datasets. Some experiments to test the veracity of this process
are described in detail, along with the computer code used to produce them. Also
reported are some experiments in which the data is sonified using a homomorphic
modulation technique. The results obtained indicate that the technique may have a
wider application to other similarly structured time-series datasets.
Chapter 8: The previous chapter explored the use of audification of a numerical
series, each member representing the daily closing value of an entire stock market,
to observe the cross-correlation (trending) within the market itself. This chapter
employs parameter-mapping sonification to study the perceptual flow of all trades
in individual stock groupings over a trading day by applying various filters and
selection methodologies to a detailed ‘tick’ dataset. It outlines the use of a size/mass
metaphorical model of market activity and the simultaneous use of two opposing
conceptual paradigms without apparent conceptual contradiction or cognitive dis-
sonance to demonstrate, given conducive conditions, the power of intention over
perception and sensation, in auditory information seeking.
Chapter 9: The design of a real-time monitor for an organization’s digital net-
work can produce several significant design challenges, both from the technical and
human operational perspectives. One challenge is how to capture network data with
minimal impact on the network itself. Also, from an operational perspective, sounds
need to perform en suite over long periods of time while producing only minimal
listener fatigue. This chapter describes two related network data sonification pro-
jects which resulted in a set of audiovisual “concert” compositions (Corpo Real), an
immersive installation, and a perceptual monitoring tool (Netson). This tool uses
both sonification and visualization to present monitoring humans with features of
data flow that allow them to experience selectable operational network character-
istics. In doing so, it can be used to assist in the peripheral monitoring of a network
for improved operational performance.
Code and audio examples for this book are available at https://github.com/david-
worrall/springer/.

Acknowledgements

Gregory Kramer had a particular vision and commitment to establishing auditory


display as a legitimate discipline. His organizing of the first conference in 1992,
followed by the editing and publication of the extended proceedings, Auditory
Preface and Acknowledgements xi

display: Sonification, Audification, and Auditory Interfaces, produced a go-to ref-


erence for researchers in the field until the publication, in 2011, of The Sonification
Handbook, with major contributions by many members of the community under the
inciteful editorship of Thomas Hermann, Andy Hunt and John Neuhoff.
Over the past 10 years or so, various strands of the work in this book have
appeared in papers for the International Conference for Auditory Display and I am
grateful to many of the members of that diverse community for their annual col-
legiality, vigorous debate and general bonhomie. In 2009, my first attempt at a
succinct overview of the field (Chap. 2) was published in The Oxford Handbook of
Computer Music and Digital Sound Culture, edited by Roger Dean. Roger was
brave enough, with Mitchell Whitelaw, to supervise my Ph.D. which eventually
also formed the foundation for parts of Chaps. 3, 5, 7 and 8, for the latter of which,
the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre in Sydney funded the experi-
ments and provided the data. The securities trading data techniques discussed in
Chap. 7 were first published in the Springer’s 2010 Lecture Notes in Computer
Science volume on Auditory Display. The research and development for the net-
work sonifications reported in Chap. 9 was undertaken, in addition to other work
with Norberto Degara, during 2013–16, whilst a Professorial Research Fellow, at
Fraunhofer IIS, in Erlangen, Germany, at Frederik Nagel’s International Audio
Laboratories, under the leadership of the Institute Director, Albert Heuberger.
I am often struck by how even a small sense of the influences on a writer can
provide meaningful insights into their work. In that spirit, I mention some.
However, lest it resulted in too autobiographical an appearance, I omit details of
years of music-making and restless inquisitiveness in the arts of mathematics and
animal anatomy. I spent the mid-1980s as a member of the Composition
Department in the Faculty of Music, and in the Computer Science Department at
The University Melbourne, followed by 15 years of research and teaching at the
School of Music and the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology (ACAT) at
the Australian National University in Canberra, and, more recently, in the Audio
Arts and Acoustic Department at Columbia College Chicago. In order not to draw
the wrath of any individual inadvertently missed from what would be a long list,
most of the names accompany mine on conference papers, in journal articles and
concert programs, so I defer to another time to name them all individually. I have
been fortunate to work with a few people who have dedicated their talents to
working behind the scenes in technical and assistive capacities, and without whom
everything would have ground to a halt: Les Craythorn in Melbourne, Niven Stines
and Julie Fraser in Canberra, and David Knuth and Maria Ratulowska in Chicago.
This work is grounded in an intellectual and artistic experimental tradition, from
which I have been blessed with more than my fair share of excellent mentors. Out
of respect for those traditions and in honor of them, I also invoke the spirits of those
who have passed, thus: Richard Meale (and through him), Winifred Burston,
Ferruccio Busoni, Frans Liszt, Carl Maria von Weber, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach
and his father Johan Sebastian, John Bull, Carlos Gesualdo … That thread has been
crisscrossed in my own life by various others, including Tristram Cary, Iannis
Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen and Jean-Claude Risset. Richard was a mentor, friend
xii Preface and Acknowledgements

and as fierce critic as he was an experimentalist: in music, chess and cooking.


Although we fought bitterly as he was overcome by the affliction of postmodernism
in his latter years, he wrote some of the best music of his generation. He is deeply
missed.
Thanks go to the editorial staff at Springer for their encouragement and
long-suffering: tolerance way beyond reasonable expectations. I was not to know, at
the time of discussing publishing with them in 2015, that this book would be
written in ten residences on three continents. That it has appeared at all is a minor
miracle, performed by my beautiful, gracious, strong and unbelievably perceptive
wife, Rebekah, who, with Isaac and Catheryn have been my constant companions
and family support throughout. As we have lived out our semi-nomadic existence,
their day-long ‘visits’ to the local library, wherever we were, so “Dad could work
on the book” has not been easy for them, and we’re looking forward to a summer of
bikes and music-making.

Oak Park, Illinois David Worrall


March 2019

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
(Ernest Hemmingway, my Oak Park neighbor before I moved in.)
Contents

Part I Theory
1 Data Sonification: A Prehistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1 An Ancient and Modern Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Ancient Egyptian Use of Sound to Convey Information . . . . . . . 5
1.3 The Ancient Greek Understanding of Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.1 Numerical Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.2 Empirical Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3.3 Expressive Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 The Ear as the Central Organ of the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Music as Language and Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.6 The Rise of Abstract Instrumental Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.7 “Organizing the Delirium” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.8 From Program Music to Programmed Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.9 Algorithmic Composition and Data Sonification . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.10 Purposeful Listening: Music and Sonification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.11 Musical Notation as Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2 Sonification: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1 Classifying Sonifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2 Data-Type Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2.1 Discrete Data Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2.2 Continuous Data Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.3 Interactive Data Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3.1 Sound Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3.2 Physical Models and Model-Based Sonifications . . . . . . 41
2.4 Sonification Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.4.1 Music Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.4.2 Computational Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

xiii
xiv Contents

2.5 Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3 Knowledge and Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2 Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.2.1 Types of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2.2 Methods of Acquiring Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3 Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.3.1 Information as Quantity of Improbabilities . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.3.2 Information: General, Scientific and Pragmatic . . . . . . . . 63
3.3.3 Forms of Perceptual Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.3.4 Platonic Ideals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.3.5 Materialist Ideals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.3.6 Transcendental Ideals and Phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.3.7 Brentano’s Mental Phenomena and Intentional
Inexistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.3.8 Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.3.9 Gestalt Psychology and Group Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.3.10 Pragmatic Perception and the Meaning of Truth . . . . . . . 79
3.3.11 The Immediate Perception of Objects Through
Sensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.3.12 The Sense-Datum Theory of Immediate Perception . . . . 81
3.3.13 Representationalism (Indirect Realism) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.3.14 Phenomenalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.3.15 Direct Realism and Ecological Psychology . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.3.16 Information as Relations Through Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.3.17 Information in Networks and Connections . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.4 An Attempt at Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.5 Perception and the Neural Correlates of Consciousness . . . . . . . . 89
3.5.1 Mirror Neurons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.5.2 Critical Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.6 The Perceiving Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Appendix 3A General Methods of Acquiring Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Appendix 3B Inference Methods of Acquiring Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . 98
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4 Intelligible Sonifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.1 Two Forms of Truth: Material and Functional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.1.1 Material: Rational and Empirical Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.1.2 Functional: Truth as a Value Proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
4.1.3 Truth and Sensory Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Contents xv

4.2 Cognition: Physical and Psychophysical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110


4.2.1 The Neurophysiology of Perception and Memory . . . . . . 111
4.2.2 The Temporal Domain: Short- and Long-Term
Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
4.2.3 Implicit Aural Cognition: Gesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4.2.4 Modes of Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
4.2.5 Attention and Perceptual Gestalt Principles . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.3 Analogies, Conceptual Metaphors and Blending . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
4.3.1 Imagination and Making Sense of the Unknown . . . . . . 124
4.3.2 Analogies and Metaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.3.3 Literary Metaphors as Classical Rhetorical Devices . . . . 126
4.3.4 Metaphors and Propositional Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.3.5 Conceptual Metaphors as Frameworks for Thinking . . . . 128
4.3.6 Mental Spaces and Conceptual Blending . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.3.7 Metaphors for Sonification: INFORMATION IS
SOUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.4 Towards a Design Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.4.1 The Auditory Environment of a Sonification . . . . . . . . . 132
4.4.2 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.5 Sonification Designing: The First Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.5.1 Tuning Your Listening: Ear-Cleaning
and Ear-Tuning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.5.2 Data: Cleaning and Statistical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.5.3 Scoping: Defining the Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.5.4 Design Criteria: Representation–Figurative
or Conceptual? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.6 Aesthetic Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4.7 Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5 Towards a Data Sonification Design Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.2 The First Bottleneck: Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.3 A Comprehensive DSDF: Concepts and Requirements . . . . . . . . 155
5.3.1 Features of the Python Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.3.2 Integration Through Wrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
5.4 The SoniPy Data Sonification Design Framework (DSDF) . . . . . 159
5.5 Inter-module Communication: The Three Networks . . . . . . . . . . 161
5.6 The Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
5.6.1 Data Processing Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
5.6.2 Scale, Storage, Access, and Persistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
5.6.3 Conceptual Modelling and Data Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . 165
5.6.4 Psychoacoustic Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
xvi Contents

5.6.5 Acoustic Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166


5.6.6 User Interface, Monitoring, Feedback
and Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
5.7 Computational Designing: A New Frontier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
5.7.1 Computation Versus Computerization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
5.7.2 Some Advantages of Using a Computational
Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
5.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Part II Praxis
6 The Sonipy Framework: Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
6.1 Two Pillars of the SoniPy DSDF: Python and Csound . . . . . . . . 181
6.2 A Brief Introduction to Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
6.2.1 The Python Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
6.2.2 Values, Variables, Types and Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . 184
6.2.3 Built-In Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
6.2.4 Arithmetic Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
6.2.5 Boolean Comparison Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
6.2.6 Variable Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
6.2.7 Variable Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
6.2.8 Ordered Sets: Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
6.2.9 Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
6.2.10 Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
6.2.11 The Scope of Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
6.2.12 Flow of Execution: Looping, Iteration, and Flow
Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
6.2.13 Namespaces, Modules and Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
6.2.14 Object Orientation: Classes Variables and Methods . . . . 194
6.3 A Brief Introduction to Csound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
6.3.1 A Basic Overview of the Csound Language . . . . . . . . . . 198
6.4 The Python-Csound API (ctcsound.py) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
6.4.1 The Csound Class Csound() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
6.4.2 The Csound Class
CsoundPerformanceThread() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
6.4.3 Real-Time Event Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
6.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Appendix: The Main Python-Csound API Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Python-Csound API Error Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Python-Csound API Csound() Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Python-Csound API CsoundPerformanceThread() Methods . . . . . 210
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Contents xvii

7 Audification Experiments: Market Data Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . 213


7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
7.2 The Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
7.2.1 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
7.2.2 Quantitative Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
7.3 Review of Previous Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
7.3.1 Survey of the Sonification of Financial Data . . . . . . . . . 217
7.3.2 Sonification of Stochastic Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
7.4 Experiments: Audification of Security Index Returns . . . . . . . . . 220
7.4.1 The Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
7.4.2 Experiment 1: Can Market Correlation Be Heard? . . . . . 224
7.4.3 Experiment 2: Correlation and Decorrelated
Compared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
7.5 Experiment 3: Homomorphic Modulation Sonification . . . . . . . . 227
7.5.1 Observations on Experiment 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
7.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
8 Parameter-Mapping Sonification of Tick-Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
8.2 The Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
8.3 Experiment 4: $value at Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
8.3.1 Size Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
8.3.2 Data Subset and Sound Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
8.3.3 Observations on Experiment 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
8.4 Experiment 5: Sonification of Market Volatility . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
8.5 Experiment 6: Sonification of Price Accumulations . . . . . . . . . . . 246
8.5.1 Observations on Experiment 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
8.6 Experiment 7: Using Conflicting Conceptual Mappings . . . . . . . . 248
8.6.1 Observations on Experiment 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
8.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Appendix Market Trading Order Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
9 Polymedia Design for Network Metadata Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
9.1.1 Big Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
9.1.2 Data Transfer Protocols: TCP and UDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
9.1.3 The Sonipy Network Flow Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
9.2 The Corpo Real Art and Technology Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
9.2.1 Short Description: net–path–flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
9.2.2 Short Description: in–cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
9.2.3 Short Description: 3am chill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
xviii Contents

9.3 The Netson Network Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262


9.3.1 Review of Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
9.4 Technical Overview of the Netson System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
9.4.1 Data Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
9.4.2 Data Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
9.4.3 Data Storage Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
9.4.4 Data Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
9.4.5 Data Stream Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
9.4.6 Metaphorical Information Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
9.4.7 Sound Rendering and Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
9.4.8 Image Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
9.4.9 Internet Streaming and Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The different amplitude profiles of a the sample the samples
b being realized with amplitude modulation, and c individually
enveloped events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 40
Fig. 4.1 Illustrations of some major components of the human brain’s
motor, sensory and limbic systems involved in learning and
memory. Illustrations, some retouched, from Gray’s Anatomy
of the human body (1918). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Fig. 5.1 Conceptual flow diagram of SoniPy’s five module sets
and two networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Fig. 5.2 A simplified map of the configuration of SoniPy’s Data
Processing modules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Fig. 7.1 Only one of these two graphs is of a real market. Which
one is it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Fig. 7.2 A plot of 22 years of daily closing values of the ASX’s XAO,
highlighting the market action on “Black Tuesday”
(20 October 1987) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Fig. 7.3 A plot of Net Returns of the XAO dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Fig. 7.4 A histogram of Net Returns of the XAO dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Fig. 7.5 A plot of Net Returns, highlighting the clipping of the largest
negative return . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Fig. 7.6 A histogram of the Net Returns, illustrating both the skewness
and kurtosis of the dataset. The most extreme positive and
negative returns define the gamut of the abscissa . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Fig. 7.7 A comparison of the correlated and decorrelated Returns . . . . . . 225
Fig. 7.8 The different amplitude profiles of a the sample the samples
b being realized with amplitude modulation, and c individually
enveloped events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

xix
xx List of Figures

Fig. 7.9 Block diagram of the Csound instrument used


for the homomorphic mappings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Fig. 7.10 User interface to the sampling frequency modulation
instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Fig. 8.1 Symbolic representation of the relationship between size,
value and pitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Fig. 8.2 The distribution of $value traded for individual securities
in a single trading day. Shading indicates the number
of TRADEs for each security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Fig. 8.3 The principle information mappings $value is inversely–
proportional to pitch and the lower the tone the longer
the duration. Notice that the pitch (green line) is linear,
implying an exponential frequency scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Fig. 8.4 A second psychoacoustic adjustment: larger $value trades
(lower–pitched) have slower onset–times, in keeping
with physical characteristics of material resonators . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Fig. 8.5 The Fletcher-Munson curves of equal loudness (left) and its
inverse. Used for frequency-dependent adjustment of
amplitude to counterbalance this hearing non-linearity . . . . . . . . 242
Fig. 8.6 A graphic illustration of part of the HDF5 file structure
used to trace the movement of TRADE orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Fig. 8.7 A graphic representation of the filter applied to TRADE data
for the Experiment 5 sonifications. $value TRADEs in a
security are accumulated until the price changes, at which
point the accumulated value is sonified. On the LHS, the
dark-green circles represent trades sonified without
accumulation because price changed. The smaller light-green
circles represent TRADEs that are accumulating (±). The RHS
illustrates the overall result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Fig. 8.8 A graphic representation of the filtering of cumulative
TRADEs below $10 K and $50 K and rescaling the results
to the same pitch gamut before rendering to audio . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Fig. 9.1 Some of the wall images hung during the 18 months of the
polymedia exhibition Corpo Real (Photo Udo Rink, 2015) . . . . 255
Fig. 9.2 A graphical representation of the Sonipy network flow-rate
meter in which pitch is governed by time-differences between
sflow-sampled packets arriving at the network switch . . . . . . . . . 258
Fig. 9.3 A screen-captured image from the animation net-flow-path,
the first study of the polymedia composition Corpo Real
(Rink and Worrall 2015). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Fig. 9.4 A screen-captured image from the animation in cooperation,
the second study of the polymedia composition Corpo Real
(Rink and Worrall 2015). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
List of Figures xxi

Fig. 9.5 A screen-captured image from the animation 3am chill,


the third study of the polymedia composition Corpo Real
(Rink and Worrall 2015). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Fig. 9.6 Netson operational schematic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Fig. 9.7 Illustration of the primary mode of the graphical display . . . . . . 271
List of Tables

Table 3.1 Different types of knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 58


Table 4.1 The limbic system: Primary structural components
and functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Table 4.2 Regions of the brain used to store memories of various
kinds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Table 4.3 Descriptions of nine listening modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Table 4.4 Perceptual Gestalten in audition with succinct
examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Table 4.5 Space–time metaphors for moving objects and observers . . . . . 131
Table 4.6 Summary of some qualitative aspects of big data sets . . . . . . . 139
Table 4.7 An ear-cleaning and ear-tuning exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Table 5.1 Overview of some key features of SoniPy module sets . . . . . . 162
Table 6.1 The Csound API error codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Table 6.2 The Csound() class instantiation methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Table 6.3 The Csound() class performance and input/output
methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Table 6.4 The Csound() class realtime MIDI I/O methods . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Table 6.5 The Csound() class score handling, messages and text
methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Table 6.6 The Csound() class channels, control and events methods . . . . 208
Table 6.7 The Csound() class tables and function table display
methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Table 6.8 The Csound() class opcodes methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Table 6.9 The Csound() class miscellaneous methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Table 6.10 The CsoundPerformanceThread() class methods . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Table 7.1 Statistical properties of the XAO Net Returns under study . . . 222
Table 8.1 Metadata description of market-trading order types . . . . . . . . . 250
Table 8.2 Field descriptors for the market order types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

xxiii
Table of Code Examples

Code Example 5.1 Metacode example of the SoniPy DSDF in action.


The task modelled is to accept data streamed from a
stock market-trading engine, and use sonification to
alert the listener to specific features of the trading
activity as given . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Code Example 6.1 A simple Python class definition: Audio() . . . . . . . . . . 196
Code Example 6.2 Multiple class inheritance in Python: Data()
and Sonify() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Code Example 6.3 Contents of a simple Csound .csd file . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Code Example 6.4 Illustration of a simple complete integration
of Csound and Python via the API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Code Example 7.1 The Csound instruments used to implement sampling
frequency modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Code Example 8.1 Csound instrument for rendering $value TRADEs
for Experiment 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

xxv
Table of Audio Examples

Audio Example 7.1 An auditory comparison of four noise


distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Audio Example 7.2 Three sequences each of three audio chunks. C & E
are decorrelated versions of the Net Returns (D) . . . . 227
Audio Example 7.3 Homomorphic modulation sonifications of four
datasets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Audio Example 7.4 Full dataset versions of snippets in Audio
Example 7.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Audio Example 8.1 Audio examples of the $value sum of the total
market, moment–to–moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Audio Example 8.2 Using simultaneous $value TRADEs to contribute
to the composition of an evolving spectrum . . . . . . . . 245
Audio Example 8.3 Three examples of cumulative TRADE data,
with $value filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Audio Example 8.4 Four examples of cumulative TRADE data with a
shift in pitch to indicate whether the <price> of the
following trade increased or decreased and to what
extent. A higher pitch indicates that the price rose.
Audio rendering occurs when cumulative $value >=
$50 K. Time compression 1:60 (1 sec = 1min) . . . . . 248
Audio Example 9.1 An example of the attentional listening. A nighttime
pond chorus (Tomakin 2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Audio Example 9.2 Examples of some of the mapping strategies
employed in the Netson network monitor . . . . . . . . . . 268

xxvii
Part I
Theory
Chapter 1
Data Sonification: A Prehistory

Yasyāmataṁ tasya mataṁ; mataṁ yasya na veda saḥ


[“One who (thinks he) knows not, knows; one who (thinks he)
knows, knows not.” (Muktananda 1972)].

Abstract The idea that sound can reliably convey information predates the modern
era. The term data sonification has evolved along with its applications and use-
fulness in various disciplines. It can be broadly described as the creation and study
of the aural representation of information, or the use of sound to convey
non-linguistic information. As a field of contemporary enquiry and design practice,
it is young, interdisciplinary and evolving; existing in parallel to the field of data
visualization, which is concerned with the creation and study of the visual repre-
sentation of information. Sonification and visualization techniques have many
applications in “humanizing” information, particularly when applied to large and
complex sets of data. Drawing on ancient practices such as auditing, and the use of
information messaging in music, this chapter provides an historical understanding
of how sound and its representational deployment in communicating information
has changed. In doing so, it aims to encourage critical awareness of some of the
socio-cultural as well as technical assumptions often adopted in sonifying data,
especially those that have been developed in the context of Western music of the
last half-century or so. Whilst acknowledging the Eurocentricity of the enquiry,
there is no suggestion that the ideas discussed do not have wider applicability.

1.1 An Ancient and Modern Practice

We are at a time in the evolution of humans and their tools when the power of
digital information processing and algorithmic decision-making is demonstrating an
ability to radically change our lives: From genetic finger-printing, gene-splicing and
pharmacology, to driverless vehicles, patterns in our consumption and how we
amuse ourselves. Even now, so early in this new Dataist era, organizations with
networked computational intelligence, already have access to more data about

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 3


D. Worrall, Sonification Design, Human–Computer
Interaction Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01497-1_1
4 1 Data Sonification: A Prehistory

ourselves than we ourselves have access to, and are beginning to demonstrate a
power to make better decisions for us than we make for ourselves. What, then, one
might reasonably ask, is the use of exploring such ancient, intensely
human-centered approaches to information-gathering and decision-making as lis-
tening? How old-fashioned; how quaint! This is an increasingly pertinent question
and has been latently fundamental to why this book was written. The answers are
not necessarily obvious as they lie at the heart of the difference between a con-
ception of life merely in terms of information flow and data storage as might be
imagined by the cognitivists (Worrall 2010), and one in which mind, body and
(now technologically enhanced) consciousness play a fundamental role in active
perception, knowledge acquisition, meaning-creation and decision-making.
In a contemporary media-saturated environment, sound plays a wider variety of
different social and communicative roles today than it ever did in the past. Although
computer-generated data sonification is a relatively recent formalized practice,1
cultural antecedents can be identified in all periods of history. This chapter provides
a focused description of how the deployment of sound and sonic structures to
communicate information has changed over time. It the spirit of the adage “know
from whence you came”, doing so will assist us to critically examine some of the
socio-cultural assumptions we have adopted in our own age.2
In the process of uncovering the accuracy or truth3 of our assumptions about
perception, it is not uncommon for commentators to be seduced into a type of sense
war, in which hearing and listening are pitted against vision and seeing. Such
casting can take many forms. What is to be gained by Marshal McLuhan’s myopia,
for example?
The ear is hypersensitive. The eye is cool and detached. The ear turns man over to universal
panic while the eye, extended by literacy and mechanical time, leaves some gaps and some
islands free from the unremitting acoustic pressure and reverberation (McLuhan 1968, 168).

Thankfully, the discussion has moved on, at least in some circles.4 Each have their
place and so to be encumbered with such a burden is not useful, particularly when a
culturally-driven focus on one sense assumes a decline of another. While this book

1
The first international conference was held in 1992 (Kramer 1994a).
2
As Jonathan Sterne indicates, while there is a vast array of literature on the history and philosophy
of sound, it is without some kind of overarching, shared sensibility about what constitutes the
history of sound, sound culture, or sound studies (Sterne 2003). It is not the purpose of this chapter
to remedy that!
3
Truth, as in the Heideggerian meaning of the term alétheia: a non-propositional unconcealment.
This concept of ‘truth’ takes on the dynamic structure of uncovering that is disclosive rather than
propositional or judgmental.
4
A comprehensive survey of increasingly nuanced arguments is outside the confines of this work.
In its notes and bibliography, The Audible Past Stern (2003) lists a significant amount of literature
in English on the topic since the Enlightenment. Over a longer historical timeframe, Veit
Erlmann’s, Reason and Resonance traces historical changes in the understanding of the rela-
tionship between developing conceptions of sound and hearing physiology (2010).
1.1 An Ancient and Modern Practice 5

is about the transmission of intelligibility through sonic structures, it does not


contend that sound should replace vision in enquiry, any more than the assertion
that music expression is best when unencumbered by the “strictures” of musical
notation. This is not to deny that there are sensory differences; they all assist us
differently, else it is unlikely evolution would have sustained their individual
continuance. In fact, it can be instructive to identify them. For example, it is
hearing, not vision, that affords omnidirectional coherent perceptual experiences.
For all moving creatures, including our ancestors, both ancient and modern, in sit-
uations where sight is obscured, spatial auditory clarity plays a vital survival role in
determining both from where the predator is approaching or to where the prey has
escaped. On the other hand, we can suppose that, to a creature sleeping in a cave,
being alerted early by the amplifying echoic resonance of the space that something
of a certain mass was entering, was more important than details of its exact position.
These evolutionary adaptations are sometimes very deep in our biology, such as the
presence of defensive startle reflexes which are very resistant to habituation, and the
fascinating orienting reflex (eliciting a “what is it?” reaction) (DeGangi 2017, 309–
60; Sokolov et al. 2002) which have cultural resonances such as, for example, when
the biological preferencing of the ears to lead the eyes5 forms the basis of as a scene
transition technique to enhance narrative continuity in film.
While sensory differences do exist, it is instructive to consider that the domi-
nation of one sense over another—especially when considering hearing and vision
—is not a biological phenomenon, but a cultural one. As will be seen in the
upcoming discussion of the role of sound in the Church’s dominion over Europe,
when the control of the whole community was through the sense of hearing, such
control was more easily broken away from by individual ‘voices’ using another
sense (vision) and, supported by development in visual technologies, which in-turn,
through notation, supported the development of individual musical voices that were
able to create complex sonic ‘inputs’ to the resonant cathedrals while maintaining
‘signal’ coherence which supported understanding.

1.2 Ancient Egyptian Use of Sound to Convey Information

There are many reasons why, in certain circumstances, sound might be the preferred
representation and communication medium for information, including the known
superiority of the hearing sense to discriminate particular kinds of structures. For
example, it is easy for most of us to personally verify that a purely visual
side-by-side comparison of two sets of written records requires high levels of
concentration and that doing so is very prone to error, especially over extended
periods of time. One the other hand, listening to vocalizations of such

5
Resulting, presumably, from the superiority of the omni-directionality of hearing in
visually-obscured environments.
6 1 Data Sonification: A Prehistory

representations is much easier. The presence of such auditing6 can be inferred from
records of Mesopotamian civilizations going as far back as 3500 BCE. To ensure
that the Pharaoh was not being cheated, auditors compared the “soundness” of
meticulous independently-scribed accounts of commodities such as grains moving
in and out, or remaining, in warehouses (Boyd 1905). When granary masters,
otherwise strictly isolated from each other, assembled before the Pharaoh and
alternated in their intoning of such records, differences in their accounting records
could be easily identified aurally. A faster and more secure method that eliminates
any “copy-cat” syndrome in such alternation, is to have the scribes read the records
simultaneously—a type of modulation differencing technique. Although we have
no hard evidence that these techniques were practiced, such a suggestion does not
seem unreasonable, and would represent possibly the earliest form of data
sonification.

1.3 The Ancient Greek Understanding of Music

While sound has also played an important role in both theoretical and empirical
inquiry for millennia, the ancient Greeks wrote extensively on the subject, notably
in reference to music, the most complex and abstractly considered form of
non-linguistic aural communication made by humans. It can be divided into three
modes of enquiry that are of direct concern to sonification: numerical rationality,
empirical experience and expressive power.

1.3.1 Numerical Rationality

At least as far back as Pythagoras (born * 569 BCE), arithmetic was considered to
be number in itself, geometry to be number in space, and harmony to be number in
time. The concept of The Harmony of the Spheres, in which the Sun, Moon and
planets emit their own unique “sounds” based on their orbital revolution,7 played a
unifying role in the development of the arts and sciences, and incorporated the
metaphysical principle that mathematical relationships express qualities or “tones”

6
Literally, the hearing of accounts from the Latin auditus.
7
Known generally as the “music of the spheres”. As Gaius Plinius Secundus observed, “…
occasionally Pythagoras draws on the theory of music, and designates the distance between the
Earth and the Moon as a whole tone, that between the Moon and Mercury as a semitone, …” the
seven tones thus producing the so-called diapason, i.e. a universal harmony (Pliny [77AD] 1938).
Ptolemy and Plato also wrote about this practice.
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M2282. United Artists Television, Inc. (PWH); 5Sep74; R585010.
R585011.
Carnival of sports. By Vitaphone Corporation. 1 reel. © 7Aug47;
M2283, United Artists Television, Inc. (PWH); 5Sep74; R585011.

R585012.
The Foxy duckling. By Vitaphone Corporation. 1 reel. © 7Aug47;
M2284. United Artists Television, Inc. (PWH); 5Sep74; R585012.

R585013.
Land of romance. By Vitaphone Corporation. 1 reel. © 31Aug47;
M2347. United Artists Television, Inc. (PWH); 5Sep74; R585013.

R585027.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 294. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 1Aug47; M2315. Hearst Metrotone News, a division of
the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585027.

R585028.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 295. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 6Aug47; M2316. Hearst Metrotone News, a division of
the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585028.

R585029.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 296. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 8Aug47; M2317. Hearst Metrotone News, a division of
the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585029.

R585030.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 297. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 13Aug47; M2318. Hearst Metrotone News, a division of
the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585030.
R585031.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 298. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 14Aug47; M2319. Hearst Metrotone News, a division of
the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585031.

R585032.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 299. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 20Aug47; M2365. Hearst Metrotone News, a division
of the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585032.

R585033.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 300. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 22Aug47; M2366. Hearst Metrotone News, a division
of the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585033.

R585034.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 301. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 27Aug47; M2367. Hearst Metrotone News, a division of
the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585034.

R585035.
News of the day, vol. 18, issue no. 302. By Hearst Metrotone News,
Inc. 1 reel. © 29Aug47; M2368. Hearst Metrotone News, a division
of the Hearst Corporation (PWH); 9Sep74; R585035.

R585382.
Paramount news, number 4. By Paramount Pictures, Inc. 1 reel. ©
10Sep47; M2353. Major News Library (PWH); 12Sep74; R585382.

R585383.
Paramount news, no. 3. By Paramount Pictures, Inc. 1 reel. ©
6Sep47; M2352. Major News Library (PWH); 12Sep74; R585383.
R585723.
I walk alone. By Hal Wallis Productions, Inc. 10 reels. © 29Jul47;
L1116. Paramount Pictures Corporation (PWH); 12Sep74; R585723.

R585724.
Paramount news. No. 5. By Paramount Pictures, Inc. 1 reel. ©
13Sep47; M2359. Major News Library (PWH); 19Sep74; R585724.

R585725.
Paramount news. No. 6. By Paramount Pictures, Inc. 1 reel. ©
17Sep47; M2360. Major News Library (PWH); 19Sep74; R585725.

R585727.
Riders of the Lone Star, By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 6 reels.
© 17Jul47; L1O87. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (PWH);
13Sep74; R585727.

R585728.
Keeper of the bees. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 7 reels. ©
10Jul47; L1088. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (PWH); 13Sep74;
R585728.

R585729.
Down to earth. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 12 reels. ©
17Jul47; L1089. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (PWH); 13Sep74;
R585729.

R585730.
Pacific adventure. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 10 reels. ©
12Jul47; L1090. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (PWH); 13Sep74;
R585730.
R585731.
The Son of Rusty. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 7 reels. ©
7Aug47; L1197. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (PWH); 13Sep74;
R585731.

R585732.
The Last of the Redmen. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 8
reels. © 15Aug47; L1198. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (PWH);
13Sep74; R585732.

R585733.
Smoky River serenade. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 7 reels.
© 21Aug47; L1200. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (PWH);
13Sep74; R585733.

R585734.
Double peril. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 2 reels. (The
Vigilante, chap. no. 3) © 5Jun47; L1268. Columbia Pictures
Industries, Inc. (PWH); 20Sep74; R585734.

R585735.
Desperate flight. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 2 reels. (The
Vigilante, chap. no. 4) © 12Jun47; L1280. Columbia Pictures
Industries, Inc. (PWH); 20Sep74; R585735.

R585736.
In the gorilla’s cage. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 2 reels.
(The Vigilante, chap. no. 5) © 19Jun47; L1286. Columbia Pictures
Industries, Inc. (PWH); 20Sep74; R585736.

R585737.
Battling the unknown. By Columbia Pictures Corporation. 2 reels.
(The Vigilante, chap. no. 6) © 26Jun47; L1297. Columbia Pictures
Industries, Inc. (PWH); 20Sep74; R585737.

R585843.
Brute force. By Universal Pictures Company, Inc. 10 reels. From a
story by Robert Patterson. © 25Jun47; L1086. Bank of America
National Trust and Savings Association, Martin Gang & Gladys Glad
Hellinger Gottlieb, Trustees of Trust under Will of Mark J. Hellinger,
& Gladys Glad Hellinger (PWH); 20Sep74; R585843.

R585844.
Six-gun serenade. By Monogram Pictures Corporation. 6 reels. ©
24Feb47; L895. Allied Artists Pictures Corporation, formerly known
as Monogram Pictures Corporation (PWH); 20Sep74; R585844.

R585845.
Valley of fear. By Monogram Pictures Corporation. 6 reels. ©
15Feb47; L909. Allied Artists Pictures Corporation, formerly known
as Monogram Pictures Corporation (PWH); 20Sep74; R585845.

R586033.
Under the Tonto Rim. By RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. 6 reels. ©
26Jun47; L1145. RKO General, Inc. (PWH); 3Sep74; R586033.

R586034.
Riffraff. By RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. 8 reels. © 28Jun47; L1148.
RKO General, Inc. (PWH); 3Sep74; R586034.

R586035.
Seven keys to baldpate. By RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. 7 reels. ©
16Jul47; L1175. RKO General, Inc. (PWH); 3Sep74; R586035.

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